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Seeking God in a distracted world
Adapted from
December 12, 2012
Benedict XVI sent out his first-ever Message via Twitter under his personal Twitter handle: @pontifex, at the end of today's General Audience.
It was a gesture the Pope indirectly referred to in his catechesis earlier, saying "God has not gone away from the world, he is not absent, but comes to meet our needs in various ways which we must learn to discern”.
He pointed out that among the areas in which we can discern signs of God's presence in the world are also the new instruments that technology makes available for communicating, especially among the young.
In English, he said:
Continuing our catechesis for this Year of Faith, we now consider the unfolding of God’s self-revelation and his saving plan. The Scriptures show us its development in the history of Israel, especially in the events of the Exodus and the establishment of the Covenant.
Down the centuries Israel cherished and celebrated the memory of these saving events and, through the prophets, learned to look forward to a new and eternal Covenant destined for all mankind. The one divine plan, realized gradually in human history, culminated in the coming of Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God.
In this Advent season, we are invited to contemplate this progressive revelation of God’s saving plan and to realize that, in Christ, God continues to drawn near to us. Amid the distractions and superficiality of our world, may we learn, in faith, hope and love, to recognize and bear witness to his presence, radiating in our lives the light and joy which filled the stable of Bethlehem.
Here is a translation of the full catechesis:
Dear brothers and sisters,
In the last catechesis, I spoke of the Revelation of God, as a communication that he makes of his own self and of his benevolent plan of love for us. This Revelation of God takes place in time and in the history of man: a story that "becomes the arena where we see what God does for humanity. God comes to us in the things we know best and can verify most easily, the things of our everyday life, apart from which we cannot understand ourselves" (John Paul II, Enc. Fides et ratio, 12).
The evangelist St. Mark - as we just heard - reports in clear and synthesizing terms, the initial moments of Jesus's preaching: “This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand" (Mk 1,15).
That which illuminates and gives full meaning to the history of the world and of man began to shine in that cave in Bethlehem.It is the mystery that we will soon contemplate at Christmas - the salvation which is realized in Jesus Christ.
In Jesus of Nazareth, God showed his face and asks man to decide whether to acknowledge him and follow him. God revealing himself in history to enter into a relationship of dialog with man gives a new meaning to the entire human journey.
History is not just a simple succession of centuries, years, days, but it is the time of a presence which gives full meaning to that journey and opens it up to solid hope.
Where can we read the stages of this Revelation by God? Sacred Scripture is the privileged place for discovering the events of this journey, and I wish - once more - to invite everyone, in this Year of Faith, to take up the Bible more often in order to read it and meditate on what it says; to pay more attention to the readings in Sunday Mass - all this constitute a precious nourishment for our faith.
Reading the Old Testament, we can see how the interventions of od in the history of the chosen people, he with whom the tight alliances made do not simply pass off and fall into oblivion, but they become 'memory', together constituting the 'history of salvation' that had been kept alive in the consciousness of the people of Israel through their celebration of the salvific events.
Thus, in the book of Exodus, the Lord tells Moses to celebrate the great moment of liberation from slavery in Egypt - the Jewish Passover - with these words: "This day will be a day of remembrance for you, which your future generations will celebrate with pilgrimage to the LORD; you will celebrate it as a statute forever" (12,14).
For the entire people of Israel, remembering what God had wrought has become a sort of constant imperative for the passing of time to be marked by the living memory of past events which therefore, from day to day, shape history anew and remain present.
In the book of Deuteronomy, Moses addresses his people and says: "Be on your guard and be very careful not to forget the things your own eyes have seen, nor let them slip from your heart as long as you live, but make them known to your children and to your children’s children" (4,9).
Thus he also tells us: 'Watch out that you do not forget the things that God has done for us'. Faith is nourished by discovering and remembering that God is always faithful, that he guides history, and that he constitutes the sure and stable foundation upon which our lives can rest upon.
The canticle of the Magnificat, which the Virgin Mary raised to God, is a supreme example in the history of salvation, of the memory that keeps God's action alive.
Mary exalts God's merciful action in the concrete journey taken by his people, the faithfulness to the promises of alliance made to Abraham and his descendants - all this are living memories of the divine presence that never diminishes (cfr Lk 1,46-55).
For Israel, the Exodus was the central historic event in which God revealed his potent action. God freed the Israelites from slavery in Egypt so that they may return to the Promised Land and adore him as the only true Lord.
Israel did not undertake the journey to be a people like others - to have a national independence - but to serve God in worship and in living, to crate for God a place where man is obedient to him, where God is present and adored in the world. And naturally, not just for themselves, but to bear witness to him in the midst of other peoples.
The celebration of this event is to make it actual and present because God's work never diminishes. He keeps faith with his plan of liberation and continues to pursue it so that man may acknowledge and serve his Lord and respond with faith and love to his action.
God therefore reveals himself not only in the primordial act of creation, but by entering into our history, the story of a small people wo were neither the most numerous nor the strongest in their time.
This Revelation of God, which continues in history, culminates in Jesus Christ: God, the Logos, the creative Word which is at the origin of the world, incarnated himself in Jesus to show the true face of God.
In Jesus every promise is fulfilled, in him culminates the story of God with mankind. When we read the account of the two disciples walking towards Emmaus, told to us by St. Luke, we see how clearly it emerges that the person of Christ illumines the Old Testament - the entire history of salvation and demonstrates the grand unitary design of the two Testaments, it shows the way they are united.
Indeed, Jesus explains to the two wayfarers who were disoriented and disappointed [after the crucifixion and death of Jesus] that he was the fulfillment of every promise:T"hen beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scriptures" (24,27).
The evangelist reports the exclamation of the two disciples after having recognized that their travelling companion was the Lord: “Were not our hearts burning [within us] while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?” (v 32).
The Catechism of the Catholic Church summarizes the stages of divine Revelation and synthesizes its development (cfr Nos. 54-64);from the beginning, God invited man to intimate communion with him and even when man, through his disobedience, had lost his friendship, God did not abandon him to the power of death but offered his alliance to man so many times (cfr Messale Romano, Euch. Prayer IV).
The Catechism goes over God's journey with man, from the alliance with Noah after the flood, to his call to Abraham to leave his native land to be father to a multitude of peoples. God formed Israel as his people through the event of the Exodus, the alliance on Sinai, and the gift, through Moses, of the Laws, so he might be acknowledged and served as the one true and living God.
With the prophets, God leads his people into hope for salvation. We know, through Isaiah, about the 'second Exodus', the return from exile in Babylon back to their own land and the re-foundation of the people of Israel. At the same time, however, many remained in dispersion, and thus began the universality of this faith.
In the end, they were no longer expecting just a king, David, a son of David, but a 'Son of man' who would be the salvation of all peoples. There were encounters between cultures, first with Babylon and Syria, then later even with the Greek multitudes. We see then how the way of God widens, how it was opening ever more towards the mystery of Christ, King of the universe. In Christ, Revelation is finally realized in its fullness: He himself became one of us.
I have dwelt on recalling the action of God in human history to show the stages of this grand design of love attested to in the Old and New Testaments: a unique plan of salvation addressed to all mankind, progressively revealed and realized by the power of God, in which God always reacts to the responses of man and finds new beginnings for alliance when man loses himself. This is fundamental in the journey of faith.
We are in the liturgical season of Advent which prepares us for the Holy Nativity.As we all know, the term 'advent' means 'coming, 'presence' - and in the old days, it referred to the arrival of the king or emperor to a given province.
For us Christians the word indicates a marvelous and shattering reality: God himself left his heaven and came down to man. He created a covenant with him by entering into the history of a people. He is the King who has descended to this poor province which is earth and has made a gift to us of his visit by taking on our flesh, becoming a man like us.
Advent invites us to retrace the journey of this presence, and always reminds us anew that God has not removed himself from the world, he is not absent, he has not abandoned us to ourselves, but comes to meet us in various ways that we must learn to discern.
Likewise, we are called upon every day - with our faith, our hope and our charity - to discern and bear witness to this presence in the world that is often superficial and distracted, and to make that light that illuminated the cave in Bethlehem shine forth again in our life. Thank you.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 13/12/2012 15:55] |